Ignatief

"If Ignatieff is going to hold off Dion and Rae, he is going to have to cry uncle on Iraq. In so doing, he is going to have come up with a different argument for why we should be in Afghanistan. His humanitarian argument for why we should be in Afghanistan inevitably bleeds back into his humanitarian argument for why he supported the Iraq war; that inevitably puts him in a world of hurt. " - Koby

(a Can Lib blogger)

I am in full agreement that Ignatief should pull back from his pro-Iraq/pro-Bush stances, however I think that Koby has the rest of the argument backwards. The humanitarian (as well as the anti-Taliban) argument that Ignatief wields for staying in Afghanistan is compelling on its face. But if Ignatief doesn't repudiate his obvious errors on Iraq, those arguments he makes about Afghanistan will be ignored, not because they are false, but because they mirror the lies of Iraq.

To immunize himself from the poison of Iraq, he need only admit the error of it, and he need not re-work the arguments on Afghanistan, since he has them exactly right.